Our DIY wedding

by Hannah VictoriaOctober 12, 2017

My wedding photos came back, so naturally I haven't done any work since. Seeing how blogging comes under 'work' I though I would share them with you and make me feel slightly less guilty about neglecting my business for the last two days. Seriously, I spent the whole of yesterday making a wedding album online and didn't so much as glance in my sewing machines direction. I even had new fabric arrive from Spoonflower and I barley gave it a second glance. #obsessed right?!

We got married at the little village church in Kings Bromley (which no one has ever heard of) where I grew up and handily, where my parents still live. We had our reception in a tipi, yes a tipi at Beaudesert Park, which is where we first met 12 years ago as teenagers.

We had the most gorgeous VW campervan I have ever seen! We are both obsessed with campervans, especially VW ones and it's our dream to one day move to Devon and have one of our very own. Never mind kids, we want a campervan ha! Five year plan here we come. We are both really out doorsy and love going camping so the tipi was just so perfect for us, we were camping here when we first met and we also camped over the night of our wedding.

So lets talk about my dress! So for a long time people were telling me I should make my own. But I'm so busy with work, no joke, I work a 65 hour week as standard. Fortunately my new husband (whaaaat?! Still getting used to that) has a lot of hobbies and volunteer stuff that he does which keeps him busy! I didn't want to add to my work load with my dress too, however the perfect dress I had in mind just didn't exist, no matter how much I shopped or googled.

One day, when dress shopping with my Mom, one dress came pretty close. I decided with a little work that I could make this dress my dream dress. Little did I know that 'a little work' would turn into weeks of unpicking, beading, reconstruction and just general frustration and frankly, boredom.

I must have tried that dress on a hundred times, I actually said to my Mom on the morning of the wedding 'I'm just so happy this is the last time I have to put this on!' That sounds terrible but the truth is, I was so happy with the final dress and from when I started working on it to this day, I haven't found a dress that has even come close to matching how perfect this dress was for me. So I guess it was worth it.

At times I was pulling my hair out and decided it would probably have been easier to start from scratch. A feeling I always get when people ask me to do alterations. I would rather sew a pair of trousers from scratch and get them the right length off the bat, than shorten them by 2" or replace a zipper. SO BORING. So I don't know why I thought altering my dress so drastically, at least the top half, would be any different.

Now, because I'm such a duh brain, all my before pictures of my dress are on my old phone that don't have any more... which is really unhelpful. The bottom part of the dress is much the same, that's the reason I bought this dress in the first place, the top half however, is all me. The bodice, the lace, the beading, the straps, the gorgeous beaded drops at the shoulder... all my handy work.

I bought the belt which I hand sewed on, from an Etsy shop called Magnificence Bridal, you can find all their stunning creations here.

Rose Gold featured throughout our wedding so all my jewellery and accessories were rose gold including three pairs of shoes. I'm not that much of a diva that I needed three pairs of shoes, that was strictly necessity trust me! One pair for the church/walking down the aisle bit, dainty, pretty and most importantly allowed me to walk like a lady. Second pair, for the 'off road' terrain of our venue. Chunky heal so I didn't sink into the ground or fall over. And finally, a rose gold pair of Ted Baker flip flops, which insendially came with me on my honeymoon, for dancing to our Cailidh band in the evening.

We did the entire wedding ourselves with the help of my parents and literally DIY'd everything. I don't think we bought a single thing that didn't get altered in some way, at the very least it got sprayed rose gold. We even made our own wedding wine, which was a huge hit and quite potent let me tell you. Our own chair back decorations, guest book frames, pew decorations, cake, a wooden swing with our initials engraved, pallet signage, heart cut confetti, bunting, favours, even the succulents were home grown!

What we couldn't DIY ourselves we bought from others who had handmade these items including the table names and our cake knives which you can see down below. I found these beautiful creations on Etsy!

Here are some of the beautiful details of our day that we created.

On top of all the wedding crazy-ness I managed to release 10 new patterns in the time we were engaged. Needless to say I am struggling to get that momentum back after pretty much a month off. However, lots of stuff in the pipe line! In the second week of our honeymoon we had lots of sun bed time on an Indonesian island called Lombok. I had a lot of time to think things over and design, which is my passion, creating new things, so the future looks bright! Hopefully I can get my momentum back!